


Laundry Day

by Dardrea



Series: Fluffy Hiatus Sunday Ficlets [10]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Rumbelle - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hiatus Sunday Fluff 2014 - 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 14:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3413732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Week 10 of the Hiatus Sunday Fluff. Belle makes a mistake with the laundry and tries to make up for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laundry Day

**Author's Note:**

> Number 10--last one! Next week Once is *finally* back so Sunday is back to being OUaT day rather than fluff day. Good or bad, I'm so ready for hiatus to be over. Thanks for reading. If you haven't already, check out my other hiatus fluffs. :)

“Rumpelstiltskin?” a soft voice whispered.

He didn’t want to wake up yet. His dream had been very pleasant and his waking life was not. But perhaps that soft, gentle voice was part of the dream?

“Rumpel?” she said again, just a little louder.

He batted at the air around his ear, trying to hold onto sleep for a moment longer.

His little maid giggled.

Oh, that’s right.

“I wasn’t sleeping!” he sneered, sitting up in the big chair by the fire in the great hall.

“Of course not,” she said dryly.

He wouldn’t dignify that with a glare. Instead he drummed his fingers on his knee and tried to pretend he was simply contemplating the fire.

“Well? Don’t you have something to clean? _Somewhere else?_ ” he asked pointedly when she continued to hover just at the periphery of his vision.

The long pause before she answered had him turning his head slowly to face her, except the high, starched collar of his shirt wouldn’t let him turn just his head so he had to twist his whole torso, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

His intrepid little maid stood beside his chair with her head bowed, and her pale, pretty hands wringing.

“What have you done?” he asked, his voice as low and menacing as he could make it.

Even so he felt a twinge of guilt when she flinched. He was the Dark One: his servants _should_ flinch at the prospect of his ire. His maid was not easily cowed however. She must have gotten herself into serious trouble if it had her so downcast and timid.

She looked whole and healthy enough. How bad could it be?

She nibbled at her lower lip and shifted a little from one foot to the other and he found himself gentling his voice in spite of himself. “Belle?”

Her impossibly blue eyes flashed to his and his breath stalled in his throat. No, this would never do. He stood, and she flinched again—she must have really done it this time. He cleared his throat and waggled one finger. “Alright, dearie, come clean! What have you done?”

She took a deep breath. “I was doing your laundry.”

“Well—that’s good, isn’t it? It _is_ one of your responsibilities.”

“Ye-es. But you see I was out of that conditioner for your leathers. And I—uhm…”

“You…did what?”

“I went to your workroom to get more but you weren’t there but I thought I knew where you kept it only I must have mistaken it and taken the wrong one—” she said in a rush.

Wait, his favorite, nearly impossible to replace without slaying another dragon—and those were becoming increasingly hard to find—dragon-hide leathers? He almost whimpered. “ _What have you done?_ ”

~~~

She hadn’t just managed to dye his leathers a pure, blinding white—and really, any color at all he could have dealt with, bright yellow, green, orange, even a brilliant pink he could have worked into his flamboyant aesthetic but what was the _Dark_ One to do with purest, clearest _white?_ —but in her panic after seeing the leather begin to discolor she’d knocked the vial that had done the deed into the wash water with everything else she’d had soaking and managed to dye all of his favorite clothes the same screaming white.

And it wasn’t technically a dye but a potion, and it was one that proved particularly resistant to its magic being undone. Two days later he hadn’t managed to get one single item she’d accidentally magically bleached to turn even one shade darker.

Which was why, when next he went out feeling the need for the magical and physical protection of his dragon-hide, he found himself decked from head to toe in purest white.

The only satisfaction he could take was that at least she had the grace to cringe at the sight of him.

He didn’t need to leave through the front door but he did, just so he could slam it behind him.

~~~

Although it galled both his sense of propriety and of fashion, his…‘customers’ didn’t actually worry so much about the color of his clothes. His movements and manner and physical appearance were odd enough that though he got strange looks—but didn’t he always?—no one dared comment on his new color scheme.

Still, he was out of sorts when he returned to his home, poofing into the great hall by his wheel, ready to distract himself with some spinning. He paused. There was a pillow on his seat. He picked it up and snorted, tossing it aside in irritation. The wood of the old stool was polished and worn to a perfect fit, a perfect smoothness. As if he needed a pillow to sit there after three hundred years.

He did appreciate that his basket of straw had been topped off though.

~~~

A few hours later, soothed by the rolling of the wheel and the feeling of rough straw drawn out to smooth gold in his hands, he heard the door creak open.

He cocked his head when it stopped short and shut again and he blinked in confusion when that was followed by a knock. When he stared, waiting, and it continued to not open until finally there was another knock at last it dawned on him to call out, “Enter?”

His little maid let herself in, carrying the tea tray, her head bowed. She’d been subdued since the incident with the laundry but this was new. This was almost like…well, it was almost like she was a real maid.

“Tea, sir,” she said diffidently, her head still down so she missed the confused look he gave her. He could see it was tea. It was tea time. She always brought him tea if he was home at this time of day and she could find him.

She peeked at him, her gaze sweeping down over his clothes—he hadn’t bothered to change—and her mouth pulled tight.

“Bring me that table. I want to take my tea at the wheel today,” he said experimentally.

She looked behind her in confusion at the direction he’d indicated where a small side table had appeared that had not been there when she’d entered. She nodded and bobbed a brief curtsey, setting the tray on the large table in the center of the room where he took his meals and going to wrestle the light but awkwardly sized side table over to the wheel.

He watched out of the corner of his eye, fascinated.

She dusted her hands when the side table was in place and quickly retrieved the tea tray, setting it carefully down where he could reach without having to stretch far from his place.

“Shall I pour, sir?”

He nodded regally. “You may,” he said, the wheel still spinning under his hand—the wheels in his head spinning faster.

“I made three kinds of cookie today,” she said, pouring out a cup for him—she hadn’t brought one for herself this time—and adding the sugar just as he always took it. “Raspberry shortbread, chocolate chip, and ginger snaps.”

 “Very good,” he said with a dismissive nod. She made another curtsey, this one slightly more elegant without the tray, and let herself back out of the room. When the door closed behind her he turned to stare at where she’d disappeared, a slow smile curling his lips.

If there’d been anyone there to hear it he’d have giggled. What fun!

~~~

By the time she’d reached the kitchen there was a new bell installed there, set above the door. In a normal household it would have been connected to a series of cables and pulls or some such. In the Dark One’s castle it took only a thought to have it jingling merrily at his little maid, summoning her back to him.

She must have run the whole way, as quickly as she was back, knocking at the door again.

“Enter!” he called.

“You rang sir?” she said, not commenting on the sudden appearance of the bell. Impressive.

“I want a lemon wedge. For my tea,” he said.

“But you don’t use—”

“What’s that?” he asked slyly, when her mumbled words tapered off.

“Certainly sir. I’ll bring it right away, sir.”

~~~

“Sir?”

Was she panting? She really was making good time between the hall and the kitchen.

“You may clear the tray and return the table to the other side of the room.”

“Very good, sir.”

~~~

“Sir?” Yes, she was definitely breathless. She managed to keep from letting more than a mild irritation color her tone though. Perhaps he should back off a bit. No need to push too hard too soon.

“I’m ready for my dinner,” he said.

Credit where it was due: she was very good about meals; she’d probably been plating it already and had to stop to answer his summons.

She sighed, her mouth puffing up a little around her pursed lips. “Yes…sir.”

~~~

He had her salt his soup and potatoes and pepper the roast. He repeatedly lowered the level of the wine in his cup so he could have her refill his glass four times. He dropped his dinner fork and sent her back to the kitchen for a clean one.

Other than that she stayed near to hand, waiting with the salt and pepper and wine and a carafe of water.

She cleared the dishes to that new side table of his and set a chocolate trifle in front of him.

His eyes widened and he licked his lips. He did enjoy her chocolate trifle.

But she’d forgotten the dessert spoon and had to run back to the kitchen to get it.

~~~

On the one hand, it was amusing to see her trying so hard to play a part for which she was patently unsuited—it was why he’d bargained for a noblewoman to be his maid in the first place after all. She hadn’t tried to be so demure and servile since her first week at the castle though and she hadn’t even been that good at it then.

Which led to the other hand, where he thought he might _almost_ miss her bright chatter while she sat down to eat with him and pestered him for details about his deals and his travels and stories of his long years as a wizard. It was just possible he might even miss a little of her sarcasm and amusement when she thought he was being too full of himself.

He did wonder how much longer she could last.

~~~

He sat in his chair before the fire, fingers steepled in front of him, contemplating his past and, through that dead seer’s ‘gift,’ his future when the door to the hall slammed open.

“Ah! About time, dearie. I want you to fetch my—”

“Rumpelstiltskin! _This_ is going too far!” She stalked across the room and slammed a bell and iron bracket, apparently ripped right from the wall, down on the arm of his chair, barely giving him enough time to move his hand out of the way.

“Whatever are you talking about?” he asked innocently, blinking up at her with his most wounded expression.

“Don’t you give me that, you…you! I’m sorry I accidently dyed all your favorite clothes white but you know perfectly well you’re smart enough to find a way to fix it. I think the only reason you haven’t already is that you enjoy knowing I feel guilty about it.”

“Why, Belle—”

“And I have been trying to be nice! I have been trying to make it up to you and be a proper servant but you know what? You don’t know how to treat a proper servant and you don’t deserve one. So until you learn how to treat people with respect I am not going to continue to cater to you.”

He wasn’t going to touch any of that. “Belle—”

She leaned down over him in the chair, the dangerous glint in her eye making her eyes somehow a darker, deeper shade of blue. “ _There will be no bells in my library!_ ”

“Other than you,” he pointed out.

She gaped. And blinked. And growled. “Rum—” She sighed and straightened. When she opened her eyes again he was smirking at her and her own lips started to twitch.

She wiped her face with a hand, trying unsuccessfully to erase her unwilling smile.

Finally she gave up, shaking her head and chuckling almost silently. She flicked the bell she’d pulled from the library wall, making it ring dully, the sound muffled against the fabric of the chair. “You know what I meant.”

He shrugged, still watching her.

She sighed and brushed her fingers lightly over the back of his hand. “Good night, Rumpelstiltskin. I’m sorry about your leathers,” she said with a sweet smile, and turned and left him there.

He stared at her retreating back until the door closed behind her.

He supposed there were worse things than wearing white.


End file.
